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OverviewIceland, Greenland, Northern Norway, and the Faroe Islands lie on the edges of Western Europe, in an area long portrayed by travelers as remote and exotic - its nature harsh, its people reclusive. Since the middle of the eighteenth century, however, this marginalized region has gradually become part of modern Europe, a transformation that is narrated in Karen Oslund's Iceland Imagined. This cultural and environmental history sweeps across the dramatic North Atlantic landscape, exploring its unusual geography, saga narratives, language, culture, and politics, and analyzing its emergence as a distinctive and symbolic part of Europe. The earliest visions of a wild frontier, filled with dangerous and unpredictable inhabitants, eventually gave way to images of beautiful, well-managed lands, inhabited by simple but virtuous people living close to nature. This transformation was accomplished by state-sponsored natural histories of Iceland which explained that the monsters described in medieval and Renaissance travel accounts did not really exist, and by artists who painted the Icelandic landscapes to reflect their fertile and regulated qualities. Literary scholars and linguists who came to Iceland and Greenland in the nineteenth century related the stories and the languages of the ""wild North"" to those of their home countries. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Karen Oslund , William CrononPublisher: University of Washington Press Imprint: University of Washington Press Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 0.386kg ISBN: 9780295992938ISBN 10: 029599293 Pages: 280 Publication Date: 14 February 2013 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Replaced By: 9780295990835 Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print  This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsMaps Foreword by William Cronon Acknowledgements Introduction. Imagining Iceland: Narrating the North 1. Icelandic Landscapes: Natural Histories and National Histories 2. Nordic by Nature: Classifying and Controlling Flora and Fauna in Iceland 3. Mastering the World's Edges: Technology, Tools, and Material Culture in the North Atlantic 4. Translating and Converting: Language and Religion in Greenland 5. Reading Backward: Language and the Sagas in the Faroe Islands Epilogue. Whales and Men: Contested Scientific Ethics and Cultural Politics in the North Atlantic Notes Bibliography IndexReviewsOne should read this book for its history of ideas and perceptions and its grasp of the tensions that exist and have existed at cultural frontiers. Geographical Review Sure to be of interest to those studying Iceland and the North Atlantic's culture and environmental history and those interested in the European understanding of that region. Choice One should read this book for its history of ideas and perceptions and its grasp of the tensions that exist and have existed at cultural frontiers. Geographical Review Sure to be of interest to those studying Iceland and the North Atlantic's culture and environmental history and those interested in the European understanding of that region. Choice For centuries, Iceland has occupied a peculiar place in the European imagination. It has appeared utterly familiar and proximate on the one hand, while simultaneously exotic and remote on the other. This striking contrast serves as the launching point for Karen Oslund's compelling and richly detailed book, Iceland Imagined: Nature, Culture and Storytelling in the North Atlantic. The book offers a historical exploration of how Iceland (as well as Greenland and the Faroe Islands) was discursively constructed through the narratives of European travelers, naturalists, scientists, and statesmen from the early eighteenth through mid-twentieth centuries. - Kai Heidemann, H-SAE, December 2012 Sure to be of interest to those studying Iceland and the North Atlantic's culture and environmental history and those interested in the European understanding of that region. Choice For centuries, Iceland has occupied a peculiar place in the European imagination. It has appeared utterly familiar and proximate on the one hand, while simultaneously exotic and remote on the other. This striking contrast serves as the launching point for Karen Oslund's compelling and richly detailed book, Iceland Imagined: Nature, Culture and Storytelling in the North Atlantic. The book offers a historical exploration of how Iceland (as well as Greenland and the Faroe Islands) was discursively constructed through the narratives of European travelers, naturalists, scientists, and statesmen from the early eighteenth through mid-twentieth centuries. - Kai Heidemann, H-SAE, December 2012 One should read this book for its history of ideas and perceptions and its grasp of the tensions that exist and have existed at cultural frontiers and should bear in mind that, despite regional focus and fair-to-good maps, it is not a geography text. - Russell Fielding, Geographical Review, Vol 102, No 1, 2012 ""Sure to be of interest to those studying Iceland and the North Atlantic's culture and environmental history and those interested in the European understanding of that region."" Choice ""For centuries, Iceland has occupied a peculiar place in the European imagination. It has appeared utterly familiar and proximate on the one hand, while simultaneously exotic and remote on the other. This striking contrast serves as the launching point for Karen Oslund's compelling and richly detailed book, Iceland Imagined: Nature, Culture and Storytelling in the North Atlantic. The book offers a historical exploration of how Iceland (as well as Greenland and the Faroe Islands) was discursively constructed through the narratives of European travelers, naturalists, scientists, and statesmen from the early eighteenth through mid-twentieth centuries."" - Kai Heidemann, H-SAE, December 2012 ""Oslund's comprehensive critical analysis of the narratives and counter-narratives of the gradual evolution of Iceland and the North Atlantic's perceived exoticism ('Europe's last wilderness', 170) into a regulated, normalized part of 'our' world is a valuable contribution to the fields of environmental, cultural and linguistic history, and to Scandinavian scholarship in general. Oslund's book encourages us as scholars to make the conceptual journey to the North Atlantic, to recognize that its narratives are created only partially in response to actual experiences there but much more significantly by the political, economic, cultural and academic narratives that predominate among the travellers, native inhabitants and international onlookers who built and continue to build these narratives."" - John D. Shafer, European History Quarterly 2014 Vol. 44(2) Author InformationKaren Oslund is assistant professor of world history at Towson University in Maryland. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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